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If anything, the electoral incentives point to further lowering a tax that is highly unpopular among those who hold opinions, families of homeowners. Countering wealth inequality through inheritance taxation is thus likely to be electorally very challenging for governments 13/13

Our findings help make sense of why governments don’t do more to address wealth inequality: since those who should be most supportive of inheritance taxation hold either no or ambivalent preferences, governments lack strong electoral incentives to implement higher taxes 12/n

And while information on how higher taxes can increase equality of opportunity had little impact, arguments that the inheritance tax is a 'death' or 'double' tax lowered support for higher taxes 11/n

These treatments lowered “don’t know” answers among low-wealth individuals and also affected support for inheritance taxation. Information that higher inheritance taxation could lead to lower income taxes or better public goods provisions increased support for the tax 10/n

In a follow-up survey, we therefore implemented much more direct treatments that informed respondents about some of the most popular arguments for and against inheritance taxation 9/n

First, we test the effect of statistical information about house prices. We find no effect of our treatments, suggesting that factual information about wealth inequality does address the root cause of why some respondents are unable to formulate views on inheritance taxation 8/n

In a second step, we assess whether different kinds of information can help low-wealth individuals to express an opinion consistent with their material interest in higher inheritance taxes 7/n

It helps explain why governments, despite high and rising levels of wealth inequality, have not done more to alleviate it: Public opinion is disproportionately driven by informed and mobilized families of homeowners, who support low inheritance taxes 6/n

Combined, these findings raise what we call "the paradox of inheritance taxation": the people who would stand to benefit the most from higher inheritance taxes are those least likely to be informed and hold an opinion on the issue 5/n

Whereas about only 2 in 5 low-wealth individuals expressed an opinion in our surverys, about 19 of 20 high-wealth individuals did. AND not only were respondents of high wealth more likely to express an opinion, they also supported lower inheritance taxes 4/n

Crucially for the electoral politics of inheritance taxation, individuals from families of low wealth (renters and their children) were much less likely to register an opinion compared to those from high-wealth families (homeowners and their children) 3/n

A core reason governments are reluctant to counteract wealth inequality through inheritance taxation, we argue, is that many people have never thought much about their views of the tax. In our surveys of the UK, about 40% answered “don’t know” to our questions about it 2/n

Haha men lidt grotesk alligevel :)